Society For The History Of Technology Research Articles

The Culture of Wilderness: Agriculture as Colonization in the American West (review)

Reviewed by: The Culture of Wilderness: Agriculture as Colonization in the American West* R. Douglas Hurt (bio) The Culture of Wilderness: Agriculture as Colonization in the American West. By Frieda Knobloch. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996. Pp. xi+204; notes, bibliography, index. $39.95 (hardcover); $14.95 (paper). In The Culture of Wilderness, Frieda Knobloch discusses the manner in which agriculture has transformed the American West. She uses the concept of conquest to show how the exploitation of natural resources altered the landscape for both good and ill. Social agendas more than economic gain are key to her interpretation of agricultural expansion. For Knobloch, agriculture is a social enterprise dedicated to both the exploitation and improvement of nature. Knobloch equates agriculture with the colonization of the land, not just the production of food. She draws upon the technique of textual analysis to [End Page 420] analyze a host of sources on western agriculture. She writes: “Like the words ‘agriculture’ and ‘colonization’ the entire vocabulary of western agri/culture has a history of its own as well as being part of the history of the American West. By necessity, this is a textual study. . . . This study might be called a grammar to describe the ‘rules’ of western agriculture, a poetics to show how these rules refer to phenomena outside western agriculture” (p. 5). The result is more an ideological construct than a historical analysis. Knobloch cogently contends that civilizations develop through the process of deforestation and that forest policy is an expression of national character. She argues that government officials have used trees as renewable agricultural resources to gain control of the land. Forestry as agriculture, by implication, means state control and cooperation with timber companies for the exploitation of trees; in a word, conquest of both timber and the land. Knobloch also argues that plows enabled men to conquer the prairies and helped displace women from agriculture. Plow technology contributed to a gendered system of farming, and the use of plows indicates more about the subjugation of both women and nature than food production. Indeed, westerners equated farming with nature and the plow with civilization even though it violently tore through the soil. Similarly, ranchers rejected the cultivation of native western grasses and sought better varieties to improve their pastures—that is, nature. Range managers always stressed restoring productivity, not native grasses. Knobloch also contends that weeds often invaded cultivated and overgrazed lands where those plants had not existed prior to the agricultural exploitation of the land. Weeds are unwanted because they restrict agricultural productivity and profits, not because those plants are inherently worthless in a natural—that is, unaltered—environment. Government agencies and private companies marshaled resources to kill unwanted plants, thereby conquering undesirable aspects of nature while improving it at the same time. Throughout this study Knobloch views the conquest of nature for agricultural purposes as a continuous process. Knobloch writes with grace and clarity, and the result is a highly interpretive account of agricultural development in the American West between 1862 and 1945. Historians of American technology will find the chapter on plows and plowing most useful, although scholars of American agriculture will not find anything new in her factual, chronological narrative of the main features of agricultural development during this period. Even so, while not everyone will agree with her ideological framework, Knobloch offers anyone interested in American agriculture or the West a challenging and provocative study. R. Douglas Hurt Dr. Hurt is professor and director of the graduate program in agricultural history and rural studies at Iowa State University, editor of Agricultural History, and the author of American Agriculture: A Brief History (Ames: Iowa State University, 1994). Footnotes * Permission to reprint a review published here may be obtained only from the reviewer. Copyright © 1999 the Society for the History of Technology

The radiance of France: nuclear power and national identity after World War II

Winner of the 1999 Herbert Baxter Adams Prize of the American Historical Association. and Winner of the 2001 Edelstein Prize (formerly the Dexter Prize) presented by the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT). This award is given to the author of an outstanding scholarly book in the history of technology published during any of the three years preceding the award. Thanks to Gabrielle Hecht's talent and insight, the French nuclear program she explores has turned out to be for STS what the drosophila was for genetic research. This book only sheds new light on the role of technology in the construction of national identities. It is also seminal contribution to the history of contemporary France. --from the foreword by Michel Callon, coauthor of Acting in an Uncertain World In the aftermath of World War II, as France sought distinctive role for itself in the modern, postcolonial world, the nation and its leaders enthusiastically embraced large technological projects in general and nuclear power in particular. The Radiance of France asks how it happened that technological prowess and national glory (or radiance, which also means radiation in French) became synonymous in France as nowhere else. To answer this question, Gabrielle Hecht has forged an innovative combination of technology studies and cultural and political history in book that, as Michel Callon writes in the new foreword to this edition, not only sheds new light on the role of technology in the construction of national identities but is also a seminal contribution to the history of contemporary France. Proposing the concept of technopolitical regime as way to analyze the social, political, cultural, and technological dynamics among engineering elites, unionized workers, and rural communities Hecht shows how the history of France's first generation of nuclear reactors is also history of the multiple meanings of nationalism, from the postwar period (and France's desire for post-Vichy redemption) to 1969 and the adoption of Frenchified American design. This paperback edition of Hecht's groundbreaking book includes both Callon's foreword and an afterword by the author in which she brings the story up to date, and reflects on such recent developments as the 2007 French presidential election, the promotion of nuclear power as the solution to climate change, and France's aggressive exporting of nuclear technology. Inside Technology series

Current Bibliography in the History of Technology (1996-1997)

Current Bibliography in the History of Technology (1996–1997) The following compilation is the thirty-fifth annual bibliography of current publications in the history of technology. Previous bibliographies in this series have appeared in Technology and Culture since 1964. The reader is also referred to the fifth publication of the SHOT Monograph Series, Eugene S. Ferguson’s Bibliography of the History of Technology (Cambridge, Mass., 1968). This year’s compilation marks a few changes for the bibliography. First, it combines coverage for two years of publication in the history of technology, 1996 and 1997. The advantage of combining these years is in catching up to current publication and thus increasing the timeliness of future issues of the Current Bibliography. By combining these two years, we are also offering the largest Current Bibliography yet, with more than 3,300 entries. The disadvantage of squeezing two years of bibliography into one year of work is reduced coverage of the literature, though this will be only a one-time occurrence. Second, the change in publishers of Technology and Culture provided impetus for a review of the format of this bibliography, as well as a significant and long overdue upgrade in the software used to produce it. As a result, the bibliography has acquired a new look in some respects. The most visible change is in the use of numbered references, which simplifies the referencing scheme from the name and subject indexes. The bibliography itself continues to be organized by subject classifications; fortunately, the bibliography’s own Y2K problem remains a few years off, when it will be time to reorganize the chronological divisions to reflect the advent of a new century. Last, the team of contributors to the bibliography has changed, as well. After many years of service, Stephen Cutcliffe is stepping back from his role as contributor. As regular users of the Current Bibliography remember, Stephen served as editor of the bibliography before me, and he has been a great help throughout my years as editor. His annual stack of contributions will be missed, though I will not be surprised if he cannot resist submitting the occasional reference. The bibliography has been available to scholars in electronic form since March 1992 on the Research Libraries Information Network (RLIN) as part of the HST (History of Science and Technology) file. It provides on-line access to [End Page 1] Current Bibliography in the History of Technology for the years 1987 through 1997, and it is possible to query it from your personal computer using a variety of indexes, assuming that you have a modem or access to the Internet. Members of the Society for the History of Technology now have free access to this database; for instructions, please consult the SHOT homepage <http://shot.press.jhu.edu> on the World Wide Web. For more information on personal or institutional RLIN accounts, please contact the RLIN Information Center at 800-537-7546 (U.S. and Canada) or consult the homepage of the Research Libraries Group <http://www.rlg.org>. The Current Bibliography of the History of Science and the Bibliografia Italiana di Storia della Scienza are also available in the HST file, and it is planned that more bibliographic files in the history of science, technology and medicine will be added to the file. Users of the HST file can obtain from me a copy of the working thesaurus for the Current Bibliography in the History of Technology, which should prove useful in working with this database. I would like to thank the other contributors to the bibliography: Guillaume de Syon, Katalin Harkányi, Patrick Harshbarger, and Ian Winship. Readers willing to scan a selected set of journals or keep track of publications in one of the subfields of the history of technology should contact me, as additional contributors are welcome and needed. I hope that a few members of the Society for the History of Technology will step forward to increase the number of contributors. Improved coverage of Eastern European, Asian, and Latin American publications remains a desideratum, and help in these areas from correspondents would be welcome. Institutions or individuals aware of a journal or publication series that has been neglected in...

Joseph Henry: The Rise of an American Scientist

Reviewed by: Joseph Henry: The Rise of an American Scientist * Alan Douglas (bio) Joseph Henry: The Rise of an American Scientist. By Albert E. Moyer. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998. Pp. xii+348; illustrations, notes/references, index. $45. For a recent issue of Antenna, the newsletter of SHOT’s Mercurians, I updated a short essay on Joseph Henry’s contributions to radio, referring to his experiments of 1841–42 in which he sent and received electromagnetic signals between two floors of his laboratory and investigated the oscillatory character of the received impulses from thunderstorms as far as eight miles away. My interest was originally piqued by Henry’s own description in his articles on meteorology published in 1859. [End Page 162] When I rewrote this last year, I pulled down from my bookshelf the only two Henry biographies: the memorial volume published soon after his death in 1878, and Thomas Coulson’s Joseph Henry: His Life and Work (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1950), in hopes that they might say more. But the books held tantalizingly little detail of the technology or experimental procedures that Henry used. Had it been available then, Albert E. Moyer’s new volume would have filled in a few blanks, since it focuses on just that early part of Henry’s life, before he took control of the fledgling Smithsonian Institution. However, the book covers primarily his scientific and personal life, with little attention even to his greatest contribution to applied technology, the electromagnetic telegraph. His scientific work with electromagnets and induction is treated very thoroughly, and his disputes with Samuel F. B. Morse and Theodore Vail are described insofar as they bear on his scientific reputation, but technical or social references to the telegraph are largely lacking. Some of the Morse and Vail source material, to judge from the date of 17 March 1997 given in endnote 8 (p. 332), was a last-minute addition to Moyer’s manuscript. Coulson considered Henry’s entire life; Moyer concentrates on the first half. Coulson took a public view and chiefly used books and published papers; Moyer relies on private letters and documents and has a correspondingly deeper insight. Regrettably, for many readers of this journal at least, Moyer does not say enough about the technologies that Henry’s scientific discoveries spawned. Moyer’s nearest approaches to technological nitty-gritty come in his quotes from contemporary student notebooks, such as this one on the battery used to power Henry’s large electromagnet (p. 143): One student who had assisted Henry recalled that the professor “fairly leaped from the floor in excitement when he saw his instrument suspending and holding a weight of more than a ton and a half.” . . . Although graduates of Henry’s course would vividly recall the brute strength of his giant magnet, they also probably remembered the side effects of the large battery used to power the magnet. As one senior noted in his diary during an 1846 demonstration of the magnet, the great volume of hydrogen gas evolved by the battery caused “sneezing and coughing”—each student’s sense of smell “became tortured & wrung until everybody’s eyes became red and gave forth water.” Similarly, in a run of experiments in 1840, Henry attributed recurrent head pain, stomach upset, and even a momentary, partial loss of vision to the fumes. Other notebook entries, incidentally, record Henry’s unguarded classroom remarks on scientific credit, often at odds with his reserved or even furtive public posture. [End Page 163] What Moyer sets out to do, he does very well. And for anyone familiar only with Henry’s grumpy-walrus portrait from late in life, the cover illustration, an 1845–50 daguerreotype, is a revelation. Alan Douglas Mr. Douglas, an electrical engineer, has written three books and many magazine articles on radio and electronics history. He is with Benthos, Inc., makers of oceanographic instruments. Footnotes * Permission to reprint a review published here may be obtained only from the reviewer. Copyright © 1999 the Society for the History of Technology

Trapped in the Net: The Unintended Consequences of Computerization

Reviewed by: Trapped in the Net: The Unintended Consequences of Computerization * Bayla Singer (bio) Trapped in the Net: The Unintended Consequences of Computerization By Gene I. Rochlin. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997. Pp. xvi+293; notes/references, bibliography, index. $35 (cloth); $17.95 (paper). Gene I. Rochlin supports his alarmist title with significant documentation of the degree to which computerization has been pursued in many fields without adequate attention to the needs of human users. His point is well taken, and it deserves attention by all those interested in technological innovation. Unfortunately, his statement “That our history has been shaped by the form and use of our tools in ways totally unanticipated by their inventors is, as always, conveniently forgotten” (p. 5) is reflexive; Rochlin sees computerization as a series of cases that are all unique in history. He considers [End Page 201] each instance of computerized distress to be without historical precedent in the velocity and intensity of its unthinking adoption. History is thus discarded as a potential source of understanding and of problem-solving approaches. Rochlin concentrates his focus on issues of safety and safeguards in the electric-utility, banking, air-traffic control, and military fields. Common denominators among these are the high degree of computerization and the importance of human factors such as speed of comprehension, communication difficulties, and gaps between cultures and generations. Rochlin has compiled data from several perspectives, including participant-observer studies, government investigations, popular and academic articles, and his own collection of anecdotal material. Rochlin, however, attributes to computerization much that should be more properly charged to other factors. For example, the account of a tragic misunderstanding between a Libyan airliner and two jet fighters of the Israeli Air Force (pp. 152–54) clearly notes that the Libyan pilots “consistently misread almost every signal they were given by Cairo or the Israeli fighters,” including warning shots, wagging wings, and close flybys that allowed visual identification of the fighters’ national markings. Yet the conclusion Rochlin draws is that the true culprit was the Israeli pilots’ “cognitive frame . . . predetermined by their own electronic command and control system.” The bibliography is extensive and includes many significant historical studies by magisterial figures in the history of technology. Rochlin correctly understands the influence of culture on the adoption of technologies, and he is careful to point out that resistance is not always a symptom of Luddism. He is also careful to remind us that computerization has provided many benefits not previously available. His reasoned conclusion, that designers and consumers should be in more direct communication with each other throughout the innovation process, is unimpeachable. It is regrettable that part of the material he offers in support of this conclusion is of dubious validity. Bayla Singer Dr. Singer is an independent scholar residing in Florida. Footnotes * Permission to reprint a review published here may be obtained only from the reviewer. Copyright © 1999 the Society for the History of Technology

The Leiden Cabinet of Physics: A Descriptive Catalogue

Reviewed by: The Leiden Cabinet of Physics: A Descriptive Catalogue * Deborah Jean Warner (bio) The Leiden Cabinet of Physics: A Descriptive Catalogue. By Peter de Clercq. Leiden: Museum Boerhaave, 1997. Pp. 198; illustrations, bibliography, index. Fl 95.00. This catalog describes some three hundred objects that once belonged to the Cabinet of Physics at the University of Leiden and are now housed in the Museum Boerhaave in that city. All were made between about 1660 and 1810; many were used by Leiden’s famous and influential physicists Willem Jacob ‘sGravesande and his successor, Petrus van Musschenbroek. Their elegant designs and finishes are indicative of their eighteenth-century origins, but the basic forms are still seen in science classes and science museums around the world. The bulk of the objects (including the air pumps and electrical machines) would generally be considered scientific instruments, but a surprising number represent technologies common in the Netherlands in the eighteenth century. These include a hoist, a capstan, a windlass, a winch, a pile driver, a corn and hulling mill, a sawmill, a drainage mill, a dredger, various pumps, and steam engines after Savery and Newcomen. The artifacts are organized into the categories of mechanics, fluids, pneumatics, optics, heat, magnetism and electricity, machine models, and “other apparatus.” As the first university to introduce courses in the new experimental natural philosophy, Leiden is understandably proud of its scientific heritage. In [End Page 136] keeping with this tradition, the Museum Boerhaave has filled its historic building with informative and accessible exhibits and has sponsored a series of catalogs that enable us to analyze and appreciate its objects from afar. The catalog at hand is intelligently organized and handsomely produced. For each object, there is a clear photograph and a succinct description, enriched with information about its date, dimensions, maker, and user(s), and references to publications concerning it and/or similar objects. Deborah Jean Warner Ms. Warner is curator of the physical sciences collection at the National Museum of American History and editor of Rittenhouse, a quarterly journal of the American instrument enterprise. Footnotes * Permission to reprint a review published here may be obtained only from the reviewer. Copyright © 1999 the Society for the History of Technology

Engaging Science: How to Understand Its Practices Philosophically (review)

Reviewed by: Engaging Science: How to Understand Its Practices Philosophically * Paul T. Durbin (bio) Engaging Science: How to Understand Its Practices Philosophically. By Joseph Rouse. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996. Pp. ix+282; notes, bibliography, index. $39.95 (cloth); $16.95 (paper). In the past decade or so, Joseph Rouse has become one of the most prolific and controversial philosophers within the philosophy of science community of the United States. Engaging Science is a masterly summary and exposition of his contributions and critiques of others’ contributions to the field. It is also his best presentation to date of the perspective he espouses, which he calls “cultural studies of science.” Rouse is a careful and cautious writer. Although it can be a challenge to follow the nuances of his argumentation, he can also be quite clear about the points he wishes to make. He begins this book with a summary statement of what he opposes: “For all their complexity and internal differentiation, [the] traditions [of postpositive philosophy of science] have important common themes and fundamental shared issues that mark the disputes among them” (p. 1). In a long footnote appended to this claim, Rouse lists the many authors whose work he discusses: the “inaugurators” of postpositivism, N. R. Hanson, Thomas Kuhn, Stephen Toulmin, Paul Feyerabend, and Michael Polanyi; its “developers,” Imre Lakatos, Dudley [End Page 546] Shapere, Mary Hesse, and Larry Laudan; authors whom Rouse likes but who retain “positivist affinities,” such as Arthur Fine, Nancy Cartwright, and Ian Hacking; “realists” Wilfrid Sellars, J. J. C. Smart, Grover Maxwell, Hilary Putnam, and Richard Boyd; their “antirealist” opponents Bas van Fraassen and Clark Glymour; and—here Rouse names no individual authors—“the social constructivist tradition [that] begins with the Edinburgh Strong Programme but has been substantially modified by . . . Bath relativism, ethnographic studies, discourse analysis, actor/network theory, and constitutive reflexivity” (pp. 1–2, n. 1). In short, Rouse takes on almost all the main contributors to contemporary philosophy and sociology of science—and treats them all fairly and in detail. Rouse is equally clear at the end of the book, where social constructivism as represented by Harry Collins and Steven Yearley is compared with “cultural studies” as represented best (Rouse thinks) by Donna Haraway. This is Rouse’s final paragraph: To put the difference polemically, social constructivism is antagonistic to the cultural authority claimed by the natural sciences but uncritical of scientific practices. Cultural studies reverse this stance, aiming to participate in constructing reliable and authoritative knowledge of the world by critically engaging with the sciences’ practices of making meanings. (p. 259) It is, Rouse says, with this freedom-enhancing, life-improving critical enhancement of science that he wishes to be identified, rather than with attacks on, or defenses of, the authority of science as it is currently practiced. Historians of technology impatient with finely detailed philosophical distinctions and arguments will find Rouse’s book difficult. But those willing to do the intellectual hard labor will be rewarded with a virtually encyclopedic summary of (Rouse’s slant on) recent discussions in philosophy of science—even if they end up finding Rouse’s feminism-oriented “cultural” approach unpalatable. Paul T. Durbin Dr. Durbin is professor of philosophy at the University of Delaware, where he also directs the Medical Scholars Program and is a member of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy. He edits the Society for Philosophy and Technology’s quarterly electronic journal (http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/SPT/spt.html) and is the author of Social Responsibility in Science, Technology, and Medicine (Bethlehem, Pa.: Lehigh University Press, 1992). Footnotes * Permission to reprint a review published here may be obtained only from the reviewer. Copyright © 1998 Society for the History of Technology

Gustav Magnus und sein Haus: Im Auftrag der Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft (review)

Reviewed by: Gustav Magnus und sein Haus: Im Auftrag der Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft* Gabriel Finkelstein (bio) Gustav Magnus und sein Haus: Im Auftrag der Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft. Edited by Dieter Hoffmann. Stuttgart: Verlag für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften und der Technik, 1995. Pp. 135. DM 50. Since World War II, experimental physics has entered public consciousness as a large, expensive, technical enterprise. Yet at some point between the cabinets of the eighteenth century and the industries of the twentieth, the laboratory of physics had its start. One place where that occurred was in Berlin, in 1842, at the address Kupfergraben 7, an elegant, two-story house with a slate mansard roof that overlooked an island in the Spree River and gardens beyond. The story of this rococo building and its owner is the subject of the collection of essays under review. In commissioning this volume on its 150th anniversary, the German Physical Society has made a deliberate nod to history. During the cold war, this scientific organization found itself split in two: one part stayed in the East, another moved to the West. That distinction vanished in the wake of German reunification, at least for the organization. With help from the Siemens Corporation, the German Physical Society returned to its roots. It repossessed and refurbished its original home, the Magnus House. Eager to be rid of what had become an eyesore after four decades of Communist neglect, the Berlin Senate supported the takeover. If this was not exactly a changing of the guard, one could call it a changing of the ghosts. But ghosts haunt even in a Festschrift. We discover that the Magnus House served as an institute of Nazi ideology and as an NKVD (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs) detention center, that the popular ascription of the building’s design to Knobelsdorff is in error, and that Lagrange was thoroughly miserable as a tenant. Gustav Magnus does not come off much better. In the first sentence of the book, editor Dieter Hoffmann feels compelled to inform us that Magnus was a Jew, although this plight, or honor, apparently made no difference to either his science or his career. Magnus does seem to have been a horribly jealous person, though, refusing his colleagues access to his collection of instruments and only grudgingly recognizing his students as independent scientists. All this is told without the least irony. Magnus worked in a variety of scientific fields throughout his life, his best achievements being his investigation of specific heats, his measurement of dissolved blood gases, and his analysis of the aerodynamics of spinning bodies. He also contributed to the development of Prussian technology beyond his own work, serving as a judge at industrial exhibitions and as an adviser in the fields of agricultural chemistry, mining, weights and measures, and technical education. This aspect of his career is mentioned in passing. [End Page 568] More attention is devoted to Magnus’s role as teacher. Perhaps this focus is justified. Most historians remember him for having trained an entire generation of Berlin scientists in the art of physical experiment. The best pieces in the volume cover this part of his life, though they might have made more reference to relevant literature, for example, Wolfgang Schreier and Martin Franke’s history of the Physical Society (in yet another Festschrift commemorating the 150th anniversary of the organization). The essays draw attention to a figure often overlooked. Their quality, however, is uneven at best. Their failure to treat technology is especially regrettable, as it is the thread that runs through most of Magnus’s scientific research. Readers of this journal, therefore, will probably find the book disappointing and may want to refer to traditional accounts by August Wilhem von Hofmann and Hermann von Helmholtz. Gabriel Finkelstein Dr. Finkelstein, a lecturer at UCLA’s Center for Cultural Studies of Science, Technology, and Medicine, recently completed a dissertation on Emil du Bois-Reymond, a student of Magnus’s and the founder of the Berlin Physical Society. Footnotes * Permission to reprint a review published here may be obtained only from the reviewer. Copyright © 1998 Society for the History of Technology

Studies in Transport History Series (review)

Reviewed by: Studies in Transport History Series * H. Roger Grant (bio) Studies in Transport History Series. Edited by John Armstrong. Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996. Recently the editorial board of the Journal of Transport History (JTH), published at the University of Manchester in England, decided on an unusual book-publishing venture. It would produce a six-volume Studies in Transport History series, in which important articles from JTH on five major subject areas would be reprinted. The titles are Air Transport; Canals and Inland Navigation; Coastal and Short Sea Shipping; Railways, volumes 1 and 2, and, finally, Road Transport in the Horse-Drawn Era. As a result, the editorial board has made available mostly forgotten and relatively inaccessible pieces of transportation scholarship. After all, the vast majority of American academic libraries and, of course, most scholars lack a complete run of the JTH. Rather than merely reprinting important pieces, each volume contains an introduction in which the assigned editor places the republished works in an appropriate framework. The JTH editorial board has sensibly selected a combination of transport modes. The fact that two volumes deal with railroads is understandable, since historically this mode has had the greatest overall impact on modern society. Coverage is impressive. Although the JTH is English-based, its volumes include global happenings. For example, D. L. Lightner’s study, [End Page 549] “Railroads and the American Economy: The Fogal Thesis in Retrospect,” and A. C. Mierzejewski’s “German National Railway between the World Wars: Modernisation or Preparation for War?” are included. The editor of this volume, Terry Gourvish, has penned a thoughtful introduction, “Railways in the Macro-economy,” a benefit to the reader. Although this review can hardly cover specific contributions (they total sixty-six), additional observations are appropriate. When the literature of transportation in America is considered, the focus has been largely on rail rather than air, animal, canal, or sea. Admittedly, volumes of this series predominantly focus on the British experience; still, the pieces included hold considerable value for students of American nonrail transport topics. Since no subject should be written in a historical vacuum, an article by A. D. George, “Aviation and the State: The Grahame-White Aviation Company, 1912–1923,” offers a valuable context in which to consider the pioneer years of commercial aviation in the United States or elsewhere. If there is a weakness in these six published works, it is the lack of a cumulative or an individual volume index. Yet a table of contents provides some assistance in finding the desired pieces. Finally, the overall scholarly quality of the articles is a superb advertisement for acquiring a subscription to the Journal of Transport History. H. Roger Grant Dr. Grant is chair of the history department at Clemson University, where he edits Railroad History. He has written more than a dozen books on railroad history. Footnotes * Permission to reprint a review published here may be obtained only from the reviewer. Copyright © 1998 Society for the History of Technology

A Moment of Synthesis: Recent Textbooks in the History of Technology

Review Essay A MOMENT OF SYNTHESIS: RECENT TEXTBOOKS IN THE HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY DAVID E. NYE In the early 1990s the field of American technology and culture reached a moment of synthesis, when scholars felt ready to write general texts and when publishers found the market large enough to warrant their publication. The books under review here serve both as evidence of this achievement and as a survey of approaches to the burgeoning literature of the field.1 Let me say at once that all four works are high-quality textbooks, any ofwhich I would have no hesi­ tation in adopting, depending upon the students and the course emphasis. Each draws on a wide range of materials, and I must say that I learned from all of them. Yet my occasional ignorance may itselfbe an artifact of the field’s previously inchoate state. The nearly simultaneous emergence of so many survey texts where none previ­ ously existed suggests the establishment of a core discourse with all its implications: agreement on periodization, canonical topics, marginal subjects, common omissions, and a (usually implicit) sense of the relationship of technology and ideology. I will come back to these underlying similarities after surveying the different ways that these authors have constructed their surveys. Dr. Nye is professor of American history at Odense University, Denmark. His Elec­ trifying America (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990) won the Dexter Prize in 1993. His recent work includes American Technological Sublime (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994), ConsumingPower: A Social History ofAmerican Energies (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997), and Narratives and Spaces: Technology and the Construction ofAmerican Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997). ’Books reviewed in this essay: Alan I. Marcus and Howard P. Segal, Technology in America: A Brief History (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989); Carroll W. Pursell, The Machine in America: A Social History of Technology (Baltimore: Johns Hop­ kins University Press, 1995); Ruth Schwartz Cowan, A Social History ofAmerican Tech­ nology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Gary S. Cross and Rick Szostak, Technology and American Society: A History (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1995).© 1998 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/98/3902-0005S02.00 292 Recent Textbooks in the History of Technology 293 Alan Marcus’s and Howard Segal’s Technology in America: A Brief History preceded the others by six years or more, and their new com­ petitors have tried to do things differently. How? To take the most obvious first, where Marcus and Segal use eight chapters, both Carroll Pursell’s The Machine in America: A SocialHistory ofTechnology and Ruth Schwartz Cowan’s A SocialHistory ofAmerican Technology provide thirteen, geared to the academic semester. Gary Cross and Rick Szostak, in Technology and American Society: A History, differentiate their topics even more, with twenty short chapters. The three newer works also are more historical and a little less concerned with formal politics. Marcus and Segal move from 1607 to 1870 in 129 pages and devote the remaining 220 pages to just over a century. In contrast, their competition shifts the center of gravity to the nineteenth cen­ tury and gives a bit more attention to the colonial period. The revi­ sions that Marcus and Segal plan for a new edition (available at the end of 1998) apparently will not lessen this difference.2 They intend to expand only slightly on earlier periods, while focusing revisions on the twentieth century, as they add new material on “the technical side of technology,” government funding of large-scale projects, technology in medicine, genetic engineering, and electronics in the home. Since readers are presumably familiar with their book, I will not review it extensively here, especially with a new edition on the way. The text is clearly written and judiciously selective. It not only balances social and technological history but also places that history in a political context. For example, the colonial period is framed by a discussion of British mercantile policy, and the Constitution is presented as a “commercial document” dealing with trade, tariffs, a common currency, patent protection, and the fostering of a com­ mon commercial culture. In contrast, none ofthe three newer works devotes a...

Armour Research Foundation and the Wire Recorder: How Academic Entrepreneurs Fail

Armour Research Foundation and the Wire Recorder: How Academic Entrepreneurs Fail DAVID MORTON Many recall when audio tape recorders first appeared in the mar­ ketplace at the end of World War II. Fewer, perhaps, remember the fate of a short-lived but clever competitor known as the wire re­ corder. Its name reflected the ability of this machine to capture sound in the form of magnetic impulses on a very fine steel wire. Marketed by firms such as Wilcox-Gay, Pierce, Webcor, Air King, and others long forgotten, these recorders were based on the re­ search and development effort of an equally obscure university labo­ ratory in Chicago, the Armour Research Foundation. Wire recorders wowed Americans in the postwar years by capturing voice and music on something that seemed a very unlikely recording medium. The machines could do so without the scratch and hiss of the phono­ graph, and they could even erase the sound so that the recording wire could be used again and again. But the decline of the wire re­ corder was as sharp as its rise, and by the early 1950s, the device had been completely displaced by the tape recorder, a machine with similar operating principles but a different recording medium. What, then, is the wire recorder’s historical significance? Like many new technologies, Armour’s wire recording project involved inventors and their inventions, the research and development pro­ cess, the problems ofentrepreneurial ventures, patent management, technology transfer between nations and firms, and the creation of a new industry. All these themes should be familiar to historians of technology, who are accustomed to thinking in terms of technologi­ cal systems. The wire recording project, however, was unique be­ cause it involved a group of competing systems builders rather than Dr. Morton holds a Ph.D. in the history of technology from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is a research historian for the IEEE History Center at Rutgers University. He thanks the staff of the Paul V. Galvin Library, Illinois Institute of Technology, for their invaluable assistance during the research for this article. This research was funded in part by grant M-28-605 from the National Science Founda­ tion.© 1998 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/98/3902-0002$02.00 213 214 David Morton a core of cooperative, key individuals. Armour’s backers were a col­ lection of corporate sponsors who lacked a shared vision for the new technology. This divisiveness fragmented the industry, and ulti­ mately Armour’s efforts to build its own system failed. A magnetic recording industry emerged anyway and carried on without waiting for the technologies of magnetic recording to stabilize through the dominance of particular firms or the setting of industry standards. The history ofthe Armour wire recorder, which examines the forma­ tive years of the industry, warns against an oversimplified interpreta­ tion of the systems-building process. This historical example may also be instructive because it does not end in success; it examines technologies that never came to dominate the field. Magnetic Recording’s Early Years Magnetic recording is a surprisingly old technology. A prominent American engineer named Oberlin Smith invented it in 1878, just after the appearance of Thomas Edison’s phonograph.1 Although Smith filed a caveat, he never actually patented his idea; instead he published it in 1888 in the pages of the journal Electrical World. The Smith recorder relied upon another new invention, the telephone, to convert sound to electrical waves. These waves, constituting the signal, traveled through wires to an electromagnet.2 When the signal passed through the coils of the electromagnet, it emitted a field of magnetism that ebbed and flowed in the space around it. This pulsat­ ing field in turn magnetized a steel wire passing close to it, and the wire retained a sort ofimage of the magnetism. This was quite differ­ ent from phonographic recording, in which a wavy groove mechani­ cally held a record of sound, or optical recording, in which a sound was stored as a visible record. When the Danish inventor Valdemar Poulsen patented something similar to Smith’s idea after the turn of the century, an American...

Takeoff or Self-Sufficiency? Ideologies of Development in Indonesia, 1957–1961

Takeoff or Self-Sufficiency? Ideologies of Development in Indonesia, 1957-1961 SUZANNE M. MOON In June 1958, the Indonesian minister of public works, Dr. Mo­ hammed Noor, sent a memo to James Baird, director of the U.S. International Cooperation Administration (ICA) mission in Indone­ sia, requesting a loan to buy tractors for a major Indonesian land development project. The memo contained the following remark­ able passage: The [Indonesian] cabinet, in its efforts to increase agriculture production is making extensive plans to bring new lands into production and need mechanical equipment. I am coming to you as a friend and not (rpt not) as a minister to ask if U.S. will sell us 500 tractors on credit. We know you and Russia are the only nations in position to supply such a number quickly and we want American equipment. In making this request we are not (rpt not) asking your opinion as to what you think of the program—details such as exact plan application, technical help and financing can be dealt with later. Our resources are ade­ quate to service a loan and we are prepared to take risks and even material losses in embarking on this program—But embark upon it we will, with or without your help [emphasis added].1 Despite Baird’s recommendation that the United States respond favorably to Noor’s request, his superiors in Washington refused to supply tractors or approve loans for their purchase. The episode re­ veals something of the evolving ideologies of, and conflicts about, Ms. Moon is a graduate student in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University. She is completing a dissertation on the history of ag­ ricultural change in late colonial Indonesia. She thanks Ronald Kline, the Technology and Culture referees, and the editor for sharing their comments and insight, and her fellow graduate students in the Department of Science and Technology Studies for their advice and encouragement. ‘Quoted in ICA/Indonesia to ICA/Washington, 19 June 1958, Record Group (RG) 469 (Records of U.S. Foreign Assistance Agencies), Office of Far East Opera­ tions (cited hereafter as O/FE), Indonesian Subject Files 1953-1959, Box 48, U.S. National Archives, Washington D.C.© 1998 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/98/3902-0001$02.00 187 188 Suzanne M. Moon international economic and technological “development” in the volatile era of decolonization and the early cold war. This article explores the struggle over farm mechanization in Indonesia as a way to address the larger question of how domestic and inter­ national political concerns informed approaches to international, government-sponsored development. The factors that prompted Noor’s aggressive stance and that underlay the U.S. refusal to sup­ port this project point to broader questions about the meaning and direction of development. The history of international economic development policies and projects since World War II remains, unfortunately, largely unex­ plored by historians oftechnology.2 The amount ofeffort spent theo­ rizing, planning, and executing development projects has been enormous, easily comparable to the growth of “big science,” a sub­ ject that has rightfully received much attention from historians of technology. National governments and nongovernmental organiza­ tions alike have increasingly adopted (and adapted) a discourse of 2Although development literature is vast, few critical historical studies (as opposed to policy studies) of development focus on technology issues. Several works, how­ ever, take on the questions of technology transfer under conditions of unequal power. Arnold Pacey, Technology in World Civilization (Cambridge, 1990), and Daniel Headrick, especially Tentacles ofProgress: Technology Transfer in the Age ofImperialism, 1850-1940 (Oxford, 1981), explore the relationship between technological change and technology transfer (for Headrick) or technological dialogue (for Pacey), with special attention to unequal power relationships like that of colonies and their colo­ nizers. Headrick argues that the origins of underdevelopment can be found in the colonial past, but he does not critique the concept of underdevelopment in his discussion. Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure ofMen: Science, Technology and Ideolo­ gies of Western Dominance (Ithaca, 1989), discusses how ideologies of superiority and technical difference became connected and provides a valuable historical perspec­ tive on development by...

Marie C. Stopes and the Popularization of Birth Control Technology

Marie C. Stopes and the Popularization of Birth Control Technology PETER NEUSHUL Development and effective application of contraceptive technolo­ gies are tasks that have challenged human societies for centuries. Birth control technologies are tightly woven into the fabric of soci­ ety, affecting directly its size, composition, and well-being. Through­ out the twentieth century, contraceptive technologies had an in­ creasingly significant impact on society. Even with the development ofnew designs, materials, and pharmaceuticals, however, the techni­ cal problems associated with contraception are still only partially re­ solved. In fact, all popular barrier-type birth control technologies used today were already available, albeit in more primitive form, at the turn of the century. Despite their inextricable linkage with hu­ man population, these technologies are rarely the focus ofhistorical writing and are often overshadowed by the stories of individuals or organizations advocating their use. This is certainly the case with Marie Stopes, Britain’s pioneer birth control advocate, whose clinics and technological preferences are only of passing interest to her biographers.1 Dr. Neushul is a visiting researcher at the California Institute of Technology and at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He thanks Carroll Pursell, Ruth Schwartz Cowan, Lesley Hall, Michael Osborne, Lawrence Badash, Fernando I. Elichirigoity, DanielJ. Kevles, Frank D. Gardner, and the Technology and Culturerefer­ ees for their guidance. The research for this article was funded in part by a travel grant from the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine. 1 Marie Stopes’s biographies include two by her former lovers: Aylmer Maude, The Authorized Life ofMarie C. Stopes (London, 1924), and Keith R. Briant, Marie Stopes: A Biography (London, 1962). More reliable accounts are Ruth Hall, Marie Stopes: A Biography (London, 1977), andJune Rose, Marie Stopes and the SexualRevolution (Lon­ don, 1992). Hall and Rose used Stopes’s papers at the British Library and Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine. Norman Himes’s classic Medical History ofCon­ traception (New York, 1936; reprint, New York, 1963) uses Stopes’s clinical data and briefly mentions her inclinations with regard to contraceptive technologies. Himes also provides a detailed prehistorical examination of contraception. For a general history of contraception see Angus McLaren, A History ofContraceptionfrom Antiquity to the Present Day (Cambridge, Mass., 1990).© 1998 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/98/3902-0003$02.00 245 246 Peter Neushul Marie Carmichael Stopes (1880-1953) and particularly her Amer­ ican counterpart, Margaret Sanger (1883-1966), attract writers be­ cause of their significant contribution to the birth control move­ ment. Neither Stopes nor Sanger invented completely new contraceptive technologies, and yet both controlled distribution of birth control devices through a combination ofclinics and published materials. Stopes in particular used her clinics to test technologies and incorporated the data into newsletters, pamphlets, and numer­ ous best-selling books. This article examines the role of technology in Stopes’s career, especially focusing on her preference for specific devices. These biases are evident in her books, clinics, and corre­ spondence with manufacturers, all three pivotal factors in her cam­ paign to popularize contraception. Marie Stopes is described by friend and foe as arrogant, irrational, uncooperative, and megalomaniacal. Certainly there is some truth to all these characterizations. These traits are understandable, how­ ever, when one considers the emotionally charged atmosphere surrounding birth control during the early twentieth century. Stopes’s multifaceted campaign was fraught with contradiction. On the one hand she was an ardent eugenicist who once commented that a third of the men in England should be sterilized, “starting with the ugly and unfit,” while on the other hand she was a con­ cerned clinician who invariably placed an individual’s happiness over eugenic ideals.2 Her constituency, moreover, ranged from up­ per-class patrons to the lower classes, all of whom faced the often life-threatening prospect of repeated pregnancy. Throughout her career Stopes challenged the establishment. She could ill afford to give any quarter to competitors and critics, whose ideas threatened to dilute her effort to promote a technology that, perhaps more than any other, is permeated with powerful emotions. Unlike Sanger, Stopes published books and articles addressing the immensely com­ plex emotions involved in...

The Enigma of Early Lens Use

The Cover Design THE ENIGMA OF EARLY LENS USE JAY M. ENOCH Surprisingly little is known about the origins and early uses of lenses.1 Lens-shaped (lenses take their name from the bulging, double-convex shape of the lentil bean), near-transparent objects Dr. Enoch is Professor of the Graduate School and dean emeritus at the School of Optometry at the University of California at Berkeley, as well as professor ofphysi­ ological optics at the Department of Ophthalmology at the School of Medicine, University ofCalifornia at San Francisco. He wishes to express his appreciation to Ian Bailey (School ofOptometry, University of California, Berkeley) ; Wolfgang Heimple (Department of Ancient Near Eastern Studies, University of California, Berkeley); George Sines (Department of Materials Science, University of California, Los Angeles); and G. L’E. Turner (Museum of Scientific Instruments, Oxford Univer­ sity) for their constructive criticisms of this manuscript. 'Examples of pertinent papers areJay M. Enoch, “It is Proposed that the Cornea of the Eye of the Bull’s Head Rhyton from the Little Palace of Rnossos (Artifact Dated 1550-1500 b.c.) is a True Lens,” in Advances in Diagnostic Visual Optics, ed. A. Fiorentini, D. L. Guyton, I. M. Siegel (New York, 1987), andJay M. Enoch, “Early Lens Use: Lenses Found in Context with Their Original Objects,” Optometry and Vision ScienceTi (1996): 707-15. This article and Enoch, “Early Lens Use,” overlap to some degree but differ significantly in content. G. Sines and Y. Sakellarakis, “Lenses in Antiquity,” American Journal of Archeology 91 (1987): 191-96; G. Sines, “Precision of Engraving of Etruscan and Archaic Greek Gems,” Archeomaterials 6, no. 1 (1992): 53-68; L. Gorelick and A. J. Gwinnett, “Close Work without Magni­ fying Lenses?” Expedition 23 (winter 1981): 27-34; D. C. Lindberg, Theories of Vision from Al-Kindi to Kepler (Chicago, 1976) and Studies in the History of Medieval Optics (London, 1983). G. L’E. Turner, “Animadversions on the Origins of the Micro­ scope,” in The Light ofNature: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Science Presented to A. C. Crombie, ed. J. D. North and J. J. Roche (Dordrecht, 1985). Also see the publications ofA. C. Crombie; T. H. Martin, “Sur les Instruments d’Optique Fausse­ mentAttribues aux Anciens par Quelques Savants Modernes,” Bulletino di Bibliografía e di Storia della Scienza Matematiche e Eisiche 4 (Rome, 1871): 165-238, or Impr. des Sciences Mathématiques et Physiques, 1871; E. Rosen, “The Invention of Eyeglasses,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sdences 11 (1956): 13-53 and 183-218. C. W. King, Antique Gems and Rings, 2 vols. (London, 1872), 32-34. J. R. Baker, “Experiments on the Function of the Eye in Light Microscopy,” Journal ofthe Royal Microscopical Society 85, pt. 3 (June 1966): 231-54.© 1998 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/98/3902-0004$02.00 273 274 Jay M. Enoch made from naturally occurring crystals2 and from glass have been used for thousands of years in jewelry, as building decoration and objets d’art, and as parts of items venerated as religious symbols; many early examples of lens-like objects can be seen in museums around the Mediterranean and in the Near East, as well as in major art and archaeological centers elsewhere (for example, the British Museum). Early lenses were shaped double-convex, or, alternatively, convex on one side and near flat (piano) on the other side (plano­ convex). On occasion, hollowed-out concave surfaces also appear in a variety of settings. However, concave surfaces were not used for early lenses, per se. The craft ofglassmaking has been practiced at least since Egyptian times. Artisans fabricating or blowing glass objects had ample oppor­ tunity to encounter lens qualities in their material. Some individuals, perhaps artisans making lens-shaped objects, must upon looking through them have detected their ability to magnify and may have appreciated other lens properties. But when, where, and by whom were lenses first appreciated? So little is known about early lens history in part because lenses, made by artisans, did not arise within the scientific establishment, and there is virtually no written record of their invention and devel­ opment.3...

The Stocking Story: You Be the Historian

The Stocking Story: You Be the Historian Get access Susan Smulyan, Susan Smulyan Susan Smulyan is an Associate Professor of American Civilization at Brown University and served as the Principal Investigator for the project sponsored by the Society for the History of Technology and the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation and funded by the National Science Foundation, “Discovering Science and Technology Through American History” from which these exercises are taken. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Carolyn Goldstein, Carolyn Goldstein Carolyn Goldstein received her Ph.D. from the University of Delaware, is currently a curator at the National Building Museum, and was recently awarded an ACLS Fellowship. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Jane Gerhard Jane Gerhard Jane Gerhard received her Ph.D. in American Civilization from Brown University and teaches in the Women's Studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar OAH Magazine of History, Volume 12, Issue 2, Winter 1998, Pages 31–35, https://doi.org/10.1093/maghis/12.2.31 Published: 01 January 1998

Hot Rods and Customs: The Men and Machines of California’s Car Culture, at the Oakland Museum of California

Exhibit Review HOT RODS AND CUSTOMS: THE MEN AND MACHINES OF CALIFORNIA’S CAR CULTURE, AT THE OAKLAND MUSEUM OF CALIFORNIA ROBERT C. POST The postwar car culture is typically perceived as having southern California origins. But it had strong roots elsewhere as well, notably in the San Francisco Bay area. For one, there was the Oakland Road­ ster Show, which had its inception nearly fifty years ago and is now billed as “America’s longest-running and most prestigious hot rod and custom car showcase.” The idea of the Oakland Museum pro­ ducing an exhibition on hot-rodding also goes back a long way. By the time this one finally materialized in 1996, however, Oakland had been anticipated by displays at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles and by a traveling show titled Kustorn Kulture organized in 1993 by the Laguna Art Museum in Orange County. Still, HotRods and Customsundoubtedly comprehended the richest variety ofsuch vehicles, twenty-nine of them, ranging from a Spartan Model-T roadster refashioned by Ed Iskenderian in 1939 (fig. 1) to “CadZZila,” transformed from a Cadillac Sedanette a few years ago at a cost of $450,000 to the owner, Billy Gibbons of the rock band called ZZ Top. All told, there were about an equal number of such “customs,” designed expressly as showpieces, and “rods” intended for speed contests, be they on city streets, drag strips, or dry lakes (fig. 2). Except for a few vintage photos and scattered memorabilia, all the cars except one were displayed in whatJoe Corn has called the “celebratory” mode. Visitors were expected to savor them as icons, and no doubt the curators were thrilled when the San Francisco Chronicles notoriously hard-to-please art critic praised the show by remarking that “the collision of convention and invention that deDR . Post is former curator oftransportation at the National Museum ofAmerican History and author of High Performance: The Culture and Technology ofDrag Racing, 1950-1990. He thanks the co-curators of Hot Rods and Customs, Michael Dobrin and Philip Linhares, for their kindnesses when he visited Oakland.© 1998 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/98/3901-0005$02.00 116 Hot Rods and Customs, at the Oakland Museum 117 Fig. 1.—Ed Iskenderian, who subsequently prospered in the automotive aftermarket, took a 1924 Model-T Ford and began converting it into a “gow job” even before World War II. It was displayed in Oakland virtually unchanged from the way it appeared on the cover of one of the first issues of Hot Rod magazine in 1948. (All photos by Michael Dobrin.) fines modernity in art is likely to occur whenever obsessed tinkerers do their stuff.” (The exhibition also got an appreciative notice in the Wall StreetJournal.') But, however pleasing they might be to a critic or enthusiast, tech­ nological artifacts displayed as objets d’art are not likely to impress most readers of thisjournal, attuned as they are to contextualization as the touchstone of effective exhibitry. Fortunately, the one excep­ tion to the prevailing mode in Oakland made up for a great deal. The yellow ’32 Ford coupe from American Grajjiti was staged in a ramshackle residential garage, a set piece called “Emerald Avenue, Modesto,” created with unfailing fidelity (fig. 3). Why Emerald Ave­ nue, Modesto? For one thing, Gene Winfield, one ofthe car culture’s revered elders, lived there. So did the exhibit’s co-curator, Philip Linhares. And most importantly, George Lucas went to high school in Modesto, and his film American Graffiti was sited in that Central Valley town. Now, I was never inside a hot-rodder’s garage in Modesto, but I was in plenty of others in similar towns like El Monte, and I can attest to the exquisite authenticity of this one. From the obsolete engine sitting on the floor to the prime-coated “deuce” grille hang- 118 Robert C. Post Fig. 2.—Modified from a 1934 Ford, this rakish coupe ultimately clocked 224 miles an hour on Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats. In the 1990s a southern California collector had it restored to its appearance when it was first turned into a hot rod...

The Vindex Special: Learning about Technology Through Advertising

Journal Article The Vindex Special: Learning about Technology Through Advertising Get access Susan Smulyan, Susan Smulyan Susan Smulyan is an Associate Professor of American Civilization at Brown University and served as the Principal Investigator for the project sponsored by the Society for the History of Technology and the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation and funded by the National Science Foundation, “Discovering Science and Technology Through American History” from which these exercises are taken. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Carlita Kosty, Carlita Kosty Sheila Brennan has served as an intern at the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. She has an M.A. in American Studies from Notre Dame and currently works as an Education Specialist at The Navy Museum. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Shiela Brennan Shiela Brennan Carlita Kosty teaches seventh and eighth grade social studies at Rayburn Middle School, Northside Independent School System, San Antonio, Texas, where she coordinates the social studies department and directs participation in National History Day. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar OAH Magazine of History, Volume 12, Issue 2, Winter 1998, Pages 36–39, https://doi.org/10.1093/maghis/12.2.36 Published: 01 January 1998

Knowledge and Society: Research in Science and Technology Studies. Vol. 10, Material Culture

Reviewed by: Knowledge and Society: Research in Science and Technology Studies * W. David Kingery (bio) Knowledge and Society: Research in Science and Technology Studies. Vol. 10, Material Culture Edited by Shirley Gorenstein. Greenwich, Conn., and London: JAI Press, 1996. Pp. x+207; illustrations, notes. $73.25. Material culture, the study and interpretation of material objects as reflectors of the culture of their designers, manufacturers, and users, has had a mixed history of interpreters and interpretations. In this volume, eight members of the science and technology studies (STS) community contribute interesting essays on material culture from the point of view of consumers [End Page 541] and, to a lesser extent, designers. For the most part, material culture is effectively connected to the culture of consumption, less so to cultures of design and manufacture. In her preface, Shirley Gorenstein suggests that this volume reflects an “STS perspective on material culture.” In doing so, the book provides more insight into the many disciplines, approaches, and methodologies cohabitating the STS community than any clear and significant new thesis about material culture. Gorenstein proposes that the volume should focus on design, manufacture, and consumption to connect social context to technology attributes, but no coherent picture emerges. The essays contain no more than the well-accepted idea that the design of artifacts involves not only utilitarian functions but also a wide and complex variety of social, economic, cultural, political, and ideological functions. There is no discussion of the design process and little evidence that the authors of these essays have much familiarity with design or manufacturing; the book is largely a consumers’ view of technology. The introduction suggests that cultural themes are important in material culture, not a controversial view. “Cultural themes” are many; they purportedly have long or short lives, are conservative or volatile, are tacit, and include a bewildering variety of concepts. Among these concepts are functionality, speed, boundedness and unboundedness, time, mastery, progress, extending human capacity, the future, public, private, engagement and disengagement, counterculture, and self-sufficiency. The book includes a potpourri of eight essays encompassing many topics—advertising, computers, refrigerators, telephones, scientific measuring instruments, bicycles, folk culture, and automata. The topics share little except the conviction that technology is a social and cultural construct. The authors mostly depend on reflection, anecdotal discussions, and secondary references. Liv Emma Thorsen’s interesting essay on the difference between working-class and upper-middle-class recollections of 1930s material culture is based on a total of twenty-six interviews, hardly a sample with statistical significance. Pamela Walker Laird’s discussion of later nineteenth-century advertising with its gendered nature and ideals of progress informs us about how these concepts were self-reinforcing, but she tells us little about material culture that we did not already know. I particularly enjoyed Russell Mills’s extension of bicycle studies. In that essay, curiously, advertisers are assumed to be thoroughly knowledgeable about the cultural role of artifacts while somehow it must be demonstrated that designers are aware of the cultural roles of consumer products. Linda M. Strauss’s fascinating discussion of the role of automata in human form is based mostly on the imaginings of novelists. Overall, the book consists of an unconnected selection of essays, each having some considerable interest. These essays make clear that the STS community has embraced as dogma the thesis that technology is a social [End Page 542] and cultural construct. Within that framework, there is understandably little concern with artifact design or manufacture, and much is made of the social and cultural behavior of consumers and their interactions with technology. The book is not so much about technology as about consumer perceptions of technology. It is recommended for readers interested in the concerns and perceptions of the STS community as they relate to material culture studies. It will also engage those readers interested in the history of social construction of technology as it has developed from concept to dogma. W. David Kingery Dr. Kingery is Regents Professor at the University of Arizona. Footnotes * Permission to reprint a review published here may be obtained only from the reviewer. Copyright © 1998 Society for the History of Technology

Changing Sex: Transsexualism, Technology, and the Idea of Gender by Bernice L. Hausman

Reviewed by: Changing Sex: Transsexualism, Technology, and the Idea of Gender by Bernice L. Hausman Ruth Oldenziel (bio) Changing Sex: Transsexualism, Technology, and the Idea of Gender. By Bernice L. Hausman. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1995. Pp. xi+245; illustrations, notes, index. $49.95 (cloth); $17.95 (paper). Ruth Oldenziel Dr. Oldenziel is associate professor in gender, technology and representation at the Belle van Zuylen Institute, University of Amsterdam. Copyright © 1998 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved

“Ambitious and Glory Hunting … Impractical and Fantastic”: Heinrich Caro at BASF

Research Note “AMBITIOUS AND GLORY HUNTING . . . IMPRACTICAL AND FANTASTIC”: HEINRICH CARO AT BASF ANTHONY S. TRAVIS What makes a successful and prolific inventor? It is a question that many of us ask as we explore the careers of those who have made their names or their fortunes by invention. In the field of technol­ ogy, publications, patents, and memoirs are useful guides to how, why, and when. Sometimes surviving personaljournals, diaries, and correspondence provide meaningful insights into key periods of an inventor’s career. Even self-congratulatory accounts have their place in the repertoire ofhistorical evidence. When source material is thin on the ground, or fragmented, other approaches to verisimilitude must be sought out. Reports of litigation over patents, for example, despite their highly partisan nature, offer ways to measure accom­ plishment. In the case ofthe German chemist Heinrich Caro (18341910 ), arguably the pioneer of modern science-based chemical in­ vention, all these sources are available in abundance, sometimes overwhelmingly so. Nevertheless, it remains difficult to explore his most creative years, the 1870s and early 1880s, at least from Caro’s own perspective. It was a remarkably fertile period, when, as develop­ ment chemist and then research director at the Badische Anilinund Soda-Fabrik (BASF) of Fudwigshafen, Caro became the most important inventor of synthetic dyestuffs in the 19th century.1 Dr. Travis is deputy director of the Sidney M. Edelstein Center for the History and Philosophy of Science, Technology, and Medicine at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He wishes to thank Dr. Lothar Meinzer, BASF Archives, Ludwigshafen, and Dr. Elisabeth Vaupel, Deutsches Museum, Munich, for providing copies of rele­ vant documents, and the referees of Technology and Culture for their critical com­ ments on earlier versions of this article. This research is a contribution toward a study of Heinrich Caro’s industrial career, carried out by Dr. Carsten Reinhardt, University of Regensburg, and the author. 'Dictionary ofScientificBiography, s.v. “Caro, Heinrich”; Ernst Darmstaedter, “Hein­ rich Caro,” in Gunther Bugge, ed., Das Buck dergrosser Chemiher (Berlin, 1929), vol. 2, pp. 298-309.© 1998 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/98/3901-0004$02.00 105 106 Anthony S. Travis What insight there is into Caro’s working style at that time derives almost solely from a retrospective and somewhat one-sided account written by his main professional rival at BASF, Carl Glaser, who joined the firm in 1869.2 Glaser was engaged in the technical devel­ opment of various processes but became somewhat caught up, as did Caro, in the internecine struggles of senior management. His account, apart from its descriptions of processes and products, is a rich and revealing source of information about tensions existing at BASF, capturing, for the period 1869-84, the emotions accompa­ nying the growth of a corporation that almost from the start relied heavily on its inventive prowess. Certainly, and as uncompromisingly exposed by Glaser, it was a time of turbulent relations among the members of the managing board at BASF. Glaser did not hide his contempt for the ways in which the company was run. As for Caro, it was Glaser’s opinion that he lacked thoroughness, order, and selfdiscipline , attributes traditionally associated with the German char­ acter. Caro’s working habits in the laboratory were lax, according to Glaser, and he did not demonstrate the ability to successfully scale up processes. The fact that Caro’s reputation rested on his fame as the leading inventor at BASF serves to increase scrutiny of Glaser’s account. Glaser claimed that Caro’s creativity could be stimulated only by the clever coaxing and manipulation of the head of BASF, Friedrich Engelhorn. This prompts the question ofwhether the near hero-worship of Caro by German as well as British chemists and in­ dustrialists, especially after 1890, made him appear to have possessed more power than he really had. It is not without interest that certain of Caro’s traits as described by Glaser are actually reinforced by Caro’s own accounts, particularly of his education in Berlin and his early industrial career. These are held with the Caro Nachlass—an approximate English equivalent is “estate,” consisting of Caro’s...